I don’t agree with this declaration by my friend David P. Goldman, having spent part of yesterday evening with friends in a packed pub watching the U.S. play Portugal, and fail to win, but I sympathize enough that it makes me feel a little guilty. David writes on Facebook: I want the World Cup to be over. I detest the surge of the crowd, the shouts, the cheers, the sense of euphoric oneness. Whatever the political counterpart of this mood... Read more
Popes Should Resign More Often, declares fellow Patheos blogger Marc Barnes. Quoting Benedict’s explanation of his resignation, he argues that he didn’t resign for personal reasons that may or not be repeated. He resigned for reasons that created a norm, an example to follow, an expectation — a universally applicable rule, even. . . . Benedict’s resignation put things in their proper order. The Bishop of Rome is not a dead symbol, but a living reality, an apostle who actively... Read more
Culture and Colossus, by Grant Morrison. A comparison of two visions of technology and the future, O. B. Hardison’s optimistic one and Neil Postman’s pessimistic ones. Hardison was a prominent Shakespeare scholar, and it is Hardison’s voice to which we should pay closer attention. . . . Hardison’s is the voice not of the technocrat but of the man of culture who has mastered a wide array of traditional learning, and has turned his gaze away from it to dream... Read more
I am pleased to tell you that Ethika Politika has asked me to join their editorial board. It describes itself as: a publication of the Center for Morality in Public Life. Its purpose is to put the search for wisdom at the service of good practical decisions, and to engage contemporary ethical and cultural issues from an elevated yet common sense perspective. The other board members include Notre Dame’s Patrick Deneen, “postmodern conservative” Peter Augustine Lawler, and Catholic University of... Read more
Not to pile on poor Miss Rand, but the responses here and on Facebook to Ayn Rand’s Fiction and especially Ayn Rand the Child, my attempt at sympathy for her, have got me to reflecting on her appeal and effect. So: The title, as many readers will know, refers to Whitaker Chambers’ famous review of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, published in National Review at the end of 1957. The publication of “Big Sister Is Watching You” was one of the magazine’s finest moments.... Read more
“It’s not every day in Iceland that we divert roads for elves. It’s just in this case we were warned that elves were living in some of the rocks in the path of the road — well, we have to respect that belief.” So says an official of Iceland’s highway department, explaining why work on a road was halted. The Huldufolk, which half the people of Iceland reportedly think exist or might exist, are our size, invisible to most people, and generally... Read more
The headline of The New York Times story is apparently misleading: Collecting Catholics’ Everyday Stories as an Antidote to Scandals in the News. The writer Paul Elie has joined with StoryCorps, who produce the stories of average Americans heard on NPR on Fridays, to find similar stories of Catholics. The collaboration is called the American Pilgrimage Project. He started thinking about this ten or so years ago as he was writing his The Life You Save May Be Your Own (which I commend)... Read more
A story from my friend Mike Aquilina: I remember one of ours giving a gift of naked Barbie dolls to a saintly Franciscan friar who was sitting in our living room — then going on to explain the varieties of Barbie bottoms . . . how some had built-on panties and some didn’t. I don’t think he could make out the words as well as we could. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking. The Franciscan was the late, and great, Father... Read more
“Fernando Cabrera Draws Fire for Ties to Hate Group” reads the headline on the message from the New York Observer, speaking of the pastor and morally conservative New York City councilman. With, I suspect, some pleasure, the weekly being economically conservative but morally libertine. And what is that group? Some white supremacist group? Some racist movement? No, since Cabrera’s Latino, and a Democrat. Some neo-fascist party? No, given he’s a Democrat. It’s, wait for it, the Family Research Council. And how... Read more
The poignant truth about Andy’s dad from “Toy Story”, by Denny Burk, referring to an article by Jon Negroni. If the hints in the movies mean that Andy’s father left the family, this clarifies another layer of meaning to the Toy Story saga. Andy’s close relationship to his toys is framed by the absence of his father. This dynamic plays out in the struggle between Woody (representing his fathered past) and Buzz Lightyear (representing his fatherless future). It explains why there is... Read more
David Mills
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